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Category Archives: Sarah Palin

Many people have mentioned that Palin has benefited from being an attractive woman, and Obama has benefited from being black. One thing that has not been mentioned is that Obama is a good looking black guy. If he were eight inches shorter, 80 pounds heavier, and sweated a lot, would anyone even remember him at this point, or would he be hanging out with Richardson on the short list for Secretary of State?

Regarding Palin – If you can cram enough into 6 weeks to pull off an acceptable job at a debate, either the interview process is flawed or the job simply isn’t that hard. The fact that McCain and Obama can not show up for work for two year periods would suggest the latter.

While I don’t think Palin won the debate (it wasn’t set up to have a winner really) she clearly took and held the initiative the entire evening

Biden looked like the knowledgeable guy he probably is, which is really all the veep should be.

Should McCain lose this election – which it seems he will – Palin probably will be competing with Huckabee for the face of the Republican party, and winning. It certainly seems to going in a populist direction

The deep love of Israel was particularly noxious on both parties. Granted, Palin is a tribal candidate, not an ideological one, but there seemed to be more love and affection for Israel from her than there was for America as a whole (small town America is a subset). Biden was just foppish on that matter.

It’s insulting to only mention Israel when talking about our allies, particularly when the UK and Australia have always stood buy us. Neither mentioned those members of the Anglosphere.

The constant mentions of energy independence destroyed any ability for me to take either seriously.

While I’ve seen several mentions of Palin winking at the camera, I haven’t seen any mention of her refering to him as “Senator O’Biden” nor of Biden’s reference to “Bosniaks”.

The voters have made it clear that they do not care about experience this year. If they did, then the election would be between Richardson (governor, former cabinet secretary) and Romney (former governor, businessman and olympic organizer). Nor do they care about ideology, if they cared about that, the campaign would be between Fred Thompson (remember him), the closest follower of Reagan running in 2008, and Clinton, who basically (along with Bill) defined the modern Democratic party.

Instead it’s a contest of tribes.

The Republicans quickly split off into the evangelicals (with Huckabee as their champion) vs Everybody Else (featuring St John of Arizona).

The Democrats presented a more interesting conflict. They split off into the Black vote, the white working class vote, the over 35 woman vote, the progressive (aka elitist) vote, with a little “Return to Normalcy” tribe (sort of like the Druse or Mormons) sprinkled in.

The Black and Progressive tribes roped in the Return to Normalcy tribe and triumphed over the over 35 woman and white working class tribes, and annointed their chosen one. (On a side note, isn’t tribal warfare in America better than in other countries?)

McCain accurately saw the rules of the game as they are currently defined and saw a chance to pick off the dead enders in the WWC and over 35 woman tribes, and took it. I still think Obama is going to win in November, but it’s going to be much closer than it would be if he nominated, say, Romney or Ridge.